and showing how the German success was the victory of "one of
the truest monarchies and schools of honour and obedience yet organised
under heaven." He hoped that Germany, now that she had shown her power,
would withdraw, and demand no indemnity. But that was too much to ask.

Before long Paris itself became the scene of action, and in January 1871
was besieged and bombarded. So much of Ruskin's work and affection had
been given to French Gothic that he could not endure to think of his
beloved Sainte Chapelle as being actually under fire--to say nothing of
the horror of human suffering in a siege. He joined Cardinal (then
Archbishop) Manning, Professor Huxley, Sir John Lubbock and James
Knowles in forming a "Paris Food Fund," which shortly united with the
Lord Mayor's committee for the general relief of the besieged. The day
after writing on the Sainte Chapelle he attended the meeting of the
Mansion House, and gave a subscription of £50. He followed events
anxiously through the storm of the Commune and its fearful ending,
angered at the fratricide and anarchy which no Mansion House help could
avert or repair.

It was no time for talking on art, he felt: instead of the full course,
he could only manage three lectures on landscape, and these not so
completely prepared as to make them ready for printing. Before Christmas
he had been once more to Woolwich, where Colonel Brackenbury invited him
to address the cadets at the prize-giving of the Science and Art
Department, December 13, 1870, in which the Rev. W. Kingsley, an old
friend of Ruskin's and of Turner's, was one of the masters. Two of the
lectures of the "Crown of Wild Olive" had been given there, with more
than usual animation, and enthusiastically received by crowded and
distinguished audiences, among whom was Prince Arthur (the Duke of
Connaught), then at the Royal Military Academy. This time it was the
"Story of Arachne," an address on education and aims in life; opening
with reminiscences of his own childhood, and pleasantly telling the
Greek myths of the spider and the ant, with interpretations for the
times.

In the three lectures on landscape, given January 20, February 9 and 23,
1871, he dwelt on the necessity of human and historic interest in
scenery; and compared Greek "solidity and veracity" with Gothic
"spirituality and mendacity," Greek chiaroscuro and tranquil activity
with Gothic colour and "passionate rest." Botticelli's "Nativity" (now
in the National Gallery) was then being shown at the Old Master's
Exhibition, and Ruskin took it, along with the works of Cima, as a type
of one form of Greek Art.

In April, 1871, his cousin, Miss Agnew, who had been seven years at
Denmark Hill, was married to Mr. Arthur Severn. Ruskin, who had added to
his other work the additional labour of "Fors Clavigera," went for a
summer's change to Matlock. July opened with cold, dry, dark weather,
dangerous for out-of-door sketching. One morning early--for he was
always an early riser--he took a chill while painting a spray of wild
roses before breakfast (the drawing now in the Oxford Schools). He was
already overworked, and it ended in a severe attack of internal
inflammation, which nearly cost him his life. He was a difficult patient
to deal with. The local practitioner who attended him used to tell how
he refused remedies, and in the height of the disease asked what would
be _worst_ for him. He took it; and to everybody's surprise,
recovered.[24]

[Footnote 24: Mrs. Arthur Severn, in a note on the proof, says: "It was
a slice of cold roast beef he hungered for, at Matlock (to our horror,
and dear Lady Mount Temple's, who were nursing him): there was none in
the hotel, and it was late at night; and Albert Goodwin went off to get
some, somewhere, or anywhere. All the hotels were closed; but at last,
at an eating-house in Matlock Bath, he discovered some, and came back
triumphant with it, wrapped up in paper; and J.R. enjoyed his late
supper thoroughly; and though we all waited anxiously till the morning
for the result, it had done no harm! And when he was told pepper was bad
for him, he dredged it freely over his food in defiance! It was directly
after our return to Denmark Hill he got Linton's letter offering him
this place (Brantwood). There are, I believe, ten acres of moor
belonging to Brantwood." Mr. Albert Goodwin, R.W.S., the landscape
painter, travelled, about this time, in Italy with Ruskin.]

During the illness at Matlock his thoughts reverted to the old
"Iteriad" times of forty years before, when he had travelled with his
parents and cousin Mary from that same "New Bath Hotel," where he was
now lying, to the Lakes; and again he wearied for "the heights that look
adown upon the dale. The crags are lone on Coniston." If he could only
lie down there, he said, he should get well again.

He had not fully recovered before he heard that W.J. Linton, the poet
and wood-engraver, wished to sell a house and land at the very place:
£1,500, and it could be his. Without question asked he bought it at
once; and as it would be impossible to lecture at Oxford so soon after
his illness, he set off, before the middle of September, with his
friends the Hilliards to visit his new possession. They found a
rough-cast country cottage, old, damp, decayed; smoky chimneyed and
rat-riddled; but "five acres of rock and moor and streamlet; and," he
wrote, "I think the finest view I know in Cumberland or Lancashire, with
the sunset visible over the same."

The spot was not, even then, without its associations: Gerald Massey the
poet, Linton, and his wife Mrs. Lynn Linton the novelist, Dr. G.W.
Kitchin (Dean of Durham) had lived and worked there, and Linton had
adorned it outside with revolutionary mottoes--"God and the people," and
so on. It had been a favourite point of view of Wordsworth's; his "seat"
was pointed out in the grounds. Tennyson had lived for a while close by:
his "seat," too, was on the hill above Lanehead.

But the cottage needed thorough repair, and that cost more than
rebuilding, not to speak of the additions of later years, which have
ended by making it into a mansion surrounded by a hamlet. And there was
the furnishing; for Denmark Hill, where his mother lived, was still to
be headquarters. Ruskin gave carte-blanche to the London upholsterer
with whom he had been accustomed to deal; and such expensive articles
were sent that when he came down for a month next autumn, he reckoned
that, all included, his country cottage had cost him not less than
£4,000.

But he was not the man to spend on himself without sharing his wealth
with others. On November 22nd, Convocation accepted a gift from the
Slade Professor of £5,000 to endow a mastership of drawing at Oxford, in
addition to the pictures and "copies" placed in the schools; he had set
up a relative in business with £15,000, which was unfortunately lost;
and at Christmas he gave £7,000, the tithe of his remaining capital, to
the St. George's Fund; of which more hereafter.

On November 23rd he was elected Lord Rector of St. Andrew's University,
by 86 votes against 79 for Lord Lytton. After the election it was
discovered that, by the Scottish Universities Act of 1858, no one
holding a professorship at a British University was eligible. Professor
Ruskin was disqualified, and gave no address; and Lord Neaves was chosen
in his place.

Mrs. Ruskin was now ninety years of age; her sight was nearly gone, but
she still retained her powers of mind, and ruled with severe kindliness
her household and her son. Her old servant Anne had died in March. Anne
had nursed John Ruskin as a baby, and had lived with the family ever
since, devoted to them, and ready for any disagreeable task--

"So that she was never quite in her glory," "Pręterita" says, "unless
some of us were ill. She had also some parallel speciality for _saying_
disagreeable things, and might be relied upon to give the extremely
darkest view of any subject, before proceeding to ameliorative action
upon it. And she had a very creditable and republican aversion to doing
immediately, or in set terms, as she was bid; so that when my mother and
she got old together, and my mother became very imperative and
particular about having her teacup set on one side of her little round
table, Anne would observantly and punctiliously put it always on the
other: which caused my mother to state to me, every morning after
breakfast, gravely, that if ever a woman in this world was possessed by
the Devil, Anne was that woman."

But this gloomy Calvinism was tempered with a benevolence quite as
uncommon. It was from his parents that Ruskin learned never to turn off
a servant, and the Denmark Hill household was as easy-going as the
legendary "baronial" retinue of the good old times. A young friend asked
Mrs. Ruskin, in a moment of indiscretion, what such a one of the ancient
maids did--for there were several without apparent occupation about the
house. Mrs. Ruskin drew herself up and said, "She, my dear, puts out the
dessert."

And yet, in her blindness, she could read character unhesitatingly. That
was, no doubt, why people feared her. When Mr. Secretary Howell, in the
days when he was still the oracle of the Ruskin-Rossetti circle, had
been regaling them with his wonderful tales, after dinner, she would
throw her netting down and say, "How _can you_ two sit there and listen
to such a pack of lies?" She objected strongly, in these later years, to
the theatre; and when sometimes her son would wish to take a party into
town to see the last new piece, her permission had to be asked, and was
not readily granted, unless to Miss Agnew, who was the ambassadress in
such affairs of diplomacy. But while disapproving of some of his worldly
ways, and convinced that she had too much indulged his childhood, the
old lady loved him with all